


A Day Rued

by 9_miho



Series: Leaves of flowers and lines [1]
Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Genderbending, Genderswap, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 03:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3594822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9_miho/pseuds/9_miho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had gotten up before the sun to clean her hair and comb it and go hunting through white dusted hills to dig out spring flowers that survived their smothering. Because it was still May Day and girls found flowers for their hair before finding sweethearts. Even those girls like the mountain girl Kirsten who had no family to speak of and was almost as tall as most men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day Rued

_“Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman?” –Catelyn Stark (describing Brienne of Tarth), A Clash of Kings_

_The way a crow_  
Shook down on me  
The dust of snow  
From a hemlock tree 

_Has given my heart_  
A change of mood  
And saved some part  
Of a day I had rued.  
\- “Dust of Snow,” Robert Frost 

 

Her boots stepped on damp grass as the world that had been in unseasonal ice, branches covered in white fur, rocks and hillocks covered in sparkling diamond dust (and she knew very well what diamond dust looked like, unlike the traveling storyteller with his painted dolls). Sometimes these unseasonal snows came after the trees and plants awoke from deep sleep… but to come on May Day, that was a sign of peculiar times ahead.

But it hadn’t dampened the festivities of the village or her spirits. She had gotten up before the sun to clean her hair and comb it and go hunting through white dusted hills to dig out spring flowers that survived their smothering. Because it was still May Day and girls found flowers for their hair before finding sweethearts. Even those girls like the mountain girl Kirsten who had no family to speak of and was almost as tall as most men.

Kirsten wasn’t crying as she walked on because she had no love to mourn. It hadn’t been love, she thought firmly. Because love should be pink and soft and gold – something shareable. This had been secret and warm and self-centered, the satisfaction of admiration and desire that could override good sense.

She didn’t know where she was walking except away from the village, away from the words that she had not known could feel worse than stones or lashing hooves. Words shouldn’t feel that way but they did and it made her head throb just to contemplate that sound could be so awful – and not the rumble of an avalanche or the crack of ice beneath her feet.

Kirsten turned around to see Sven had caught up with her, his antlers still decorated with slowly dying flowers and crumpled ribbons. He looked silly – just as silly as she looked, she was sure. Because as anger was fading to something cold and barren as ashes in a fire pit, she wondered why she thought she could fool herself into slipping into a world of only humans and their double-meaning words.

“I was being stupid, wasn’t I?” she asked him.

He drew up and rested his chin on her shoulder. “Nope,” she sighed for him. And there was nothing more said.

Kirsten stroked the reindeer’s nose once before remembering that her knuckles and hands were streaked with now dry blood. Thoughtlessly, she rubbed them clean on her dark yellow skirt, the skirt that had been the brightest piece of clothing she had ever owned, because it was a color that wasn’t too ugly (closer to egg yolk than river mud) and besides, the hems were stamped and embroidered with little blue flowers. 

It had been a skirt she hadn’t realized it was possible to want, just as she hadn’t realized it was possible to want to find flowers to twist into a crown. And she had suddenly wanted slippers of bright red, not the heavy boots she still needed two pairs of socks before her feet would fit, but she couldn’t afford those, just as she had gotten the skirt by wheedling and pointing out the stains on the hem and finally giving up a handful of shiny gray and green crystals she had been planning on spending on a new harness for Sven. 

“What is there to win?” she asked Sven.

“Boys are stupid,” Sven pronounced for her with great solemnity and disgust. He added, “And I’m not a boy. I’m a reindeer.”

Kirsten smiled and kissed the top of his head. “Agreed, agreed. Boys are stupid. Next time, I’ll throw rocks at them. I don’t have to get up and close to break their noses.”

“You’re not stupid, they are,” Sven said again.

She closed her eyes but the tears came anyways and she saw red again for crying at a stupid boy, a stupid bet, his stupid friends, and her stupid silly self-absorbed thoughts growing from some sweet words and lingering looks. Because the words had been so kind and lovely and his looks had been so earnest and warming, enough that she could entertain being a girl on May Day with a sweetheart to tumble across meadows or hay or a featherbed. Even if that sweetheart would not be for long, it would be wonderful, just like May Day, for one glorious warm happy day. So she had gotten up early to bathe and gather flowers and tangle her hair into some semblance of braids. If her steps were not light, it was because she was too solid even for story magic to have an effect but her heart was light enough to approximate it.

But the girl was dead and the boy was a ghost and Kirsten cried for a story that never did happen. At least she had not cried when she had broken his silly nose with her fist, made him scream and then gurgle when not minutes before, he had laughed with his friends about “that hulking blonde cow.” But she cried now for the death of the boy who wasn’t and for the singular aching pain that words could cause.

Then she opened her eyes, bewildered, as white flurries fell atop her head, crushing her wilting flowers, and her hunched shoulders. She looked up as a crow flapped madly upwards to the darkening sky and disappeared into it. It cawed raucously, perhaps in mockery, perhaps in simpleminded joy. But for the first time, she looked at the sky properly, at the streaks of pink and violet that still blazed brighter than flowers or scarves or the fanciest ribbons. It was a warm night, a damp night, and the earth smelled rich and dark, shaking free of snow out of season.

Then Kirsten laughed and Sven smiled at her. She undid her braids and combed out the flowers in them, leaving most of the snowflakes nestled in her hair to melt to water droplets. Then she put her hand on Sven’s shoulder and started walking, a warm spring wind at their backs.

**Flower meaning of rue ( _Ruta graveolens_ ): fertility, disdain, contempt**

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to lady_mab, who read through the first draft of this and assured me that I shouldn't ditch it somewhere.


End file.
